Tiger Temple, or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, is a Theravada Buddhist temple in western Thailand that was founded in 1994 as a forest temple and sanctuary for wild animals, among them several tigers, the majority of which are Indochinese tigers. The tiger temple is located in the Saiyok district of Thailand’s Kanchanaburi province, not far from the border with Myanmar, some Шаблон:Convert northwest of Kanchanaburi along the 323 highway.
In 1999 the temple received the first tiger cub, one that had been found by villagers; it died soon after. Later, several tiger cubs were given to the temple. As of July 2014, the total number of tigers living at the temple has risen to 135.
The original eight tigers brought to the temple were rescues, and thus far DNA data is incomplete and therefore unavailable to the public, therefore the pedigree of the tigers is not entirely known. However, it is presumed that they are Indochinese Tigers, except Mek, who is a Bengal Tiger. It is possible that some may be the newly discovered Malayan Tigers, as well as cross breeds or hybrids.
It is claimed that the Tiger Temple’s philosophy for animal conservation is flawed, and an organization called Care for the Wild International claimed that based on information collected between 2005 and 2008 the Tiger Temple is involved in clandestine exchange of tigers with the owner of a tiger farm in Laos contravening the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and national laws of Thailand and Laos. It claimed it operates as a tiger breeding facility without having a respective license as required under the Thai Wild Animals Reservation and Protection Act of 1992.
Based on the Care for the Wild International report, a coalition of 39 conservation groups, including the Humane Society International, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, World Animal Protection, and the World Wide Fund for Nature, penned a letter to the director general of National Parks in Thailand under the name 'The International Tiger Coalition'. This letter urged the director general to take action against the Tiger Temple over its import and export of 12 tigers with Laos, its lack of connection with accredited conservation breeding programs, and to genetically test the tigers at the Tiger Temple to determine their pedigree and value to tiger conservation programs. It concludes that the Temple does not have the facilities, the skills, the relationships with accredited zoos, or even the desire to manage its tigers in an appropriate fashion. Instead, it is motivated both in display of the tigers to tourists and in its illegal trading of tigers purely by profit.
In December 2008, ABC News spent three days at the temple and did not see any evidence of drugging or mistreating the animals. Both Thai and Western employees who were interviewed claimed that the animals were well treated. The abbot of the monastery stated that the eventual goal was to breed tigers for release in the wild.
In August 2013, blogger and animal rights activist Turner Barr went "undercover" at Tiger Temple as a volunteer for 30 days. He chronicled his time there on a YouTube video that shows what he considered to be molestation, maltreatment and malnutrition of the tigers. He summarized his findings on his blog, Around the World in 80 Jobs, and distilled these down to 7 essential reasons to think twice before visiting Tiger Temple.
The temple sanctuary is also home to several herds of deer as well as peacocks, hornbills, water buffalo, cows, goats, horses and boars.